Dual Fates
by Catalina Storm
Summary: The Elrickyoudai are on their way to Sullust when they get a little... sidetracked.


**Dual Fates**

"You have got to learn how to control your temper, _aniki_," Alphonse Elric said with a frown.

Edward Elric scowled, slumping further into the scooped seat and crossing his arms petulantly over his chest. "It had it comin'," he muttered, finding the bulkhead to his left far more interesting than his younger brother's stormy expression.

Alphonse sighed. There really was no talking with Edward when he was sulking. Instead of reasoning with his older brother, Alphonse took a deep breath, running through calming techniques in his head while surveying the mess. He had to admit, despite everything else, that Edward was _through_.

The bulkhead panel was completely warped, it would take some doing to get it to fit back into its slot properly. Besides that, critical components to the deflector shield were scattered around the hole, and loose wires were half-pulled from the wall. "What were you trying to _do_?" The question was moot, Alphonse knew, as he crouched before the opening and frowned at it. "This is a mynock's nest of wires."

"I _know_," Edward growled. He finally glanced back to where Alphonse was attempting to get his head and shoulder through the hole. "… What are you doing, Al?"

"Trying to fix your mess, _aniki_. We can't be without the deflector shields when we come out of hyperspace - you know that. At least… hey, you didn't break the particle shield subsystem; that's good…"

Edward rolled his eyes and slumped deeper into his chair. "I was trying to fix it," he muttered.

"Well, do us both a favor and stop trying to fix things, you only break them further!" Alphonse's voice was tinny and starting to edge on angry.

Edward was working on a smart retort when a buzzer sounded from the cockpit. Alphonse started, cracking his other shoulder into the bulkhead. "That sounded like the hyperdrive failsafe! _Aniki_, go check it out!"

Muttering to himself, the blonde rose from his chair and headed down the corridor towards the cockpit. Their ship wasn't particularly large … it was, in fact, a light freighter of the YT class. Edward had never learned much about the ship. They had bought it off of a less-than-reputable dealer on their small home world, and after their childhood friend had gotten done with the systems, had declared it fit to fly.

"Now, why wasn't I involved in that?" Edward muttered to himself, stepping into the cockpit and glancing around. The hyperdrive was blinking at him angrily, and he dropped into the copilot's seat, slapping off the warning bell. They weren't anywhere near gravitational mass shadows … even if he didn't know a damn thing about their ship, he was better at astro-navigation than his brother. Edward preferred single-pilot ships anyway. He swiveled in the co-pilot's seat, bringing up the star-charts as he did so.

With a shriek of stressed mechanics, they dropped out of hyperspace.

Edward swore as the ship jerked violently, almost throwing him against the roof of the cockpit. He grabbed his restraint webbing and fastened it as well as he could, slapping the hyperdrive klaxon again before looking straight up out of the cockpit.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO!" Alphonse was yelling as he stumbled into the cockpit. Edward was fighting with the piloting yoke, pulling levers left and right, trying desperately to turn off the screaming klaxons.

"_I _didn't _do_ anything!" Edward yelled back, not really caring about the accusation, just trying to find a klaxon cut-off switch. "How do you turn that –"

Alphonse hit several buttons as he sat, effectively killing all warning bells as he did so. "You got the –"

The ship bucked under Edward's hands. "No, I don't got it under control," Edward gritted out. "Or have you missed our reason for being so abruptly yanked off course?"

Alphonse glanced at his sensor package, although the emotions rolling off of his brother were easy enough to read. "An Interdictor? This far out of Imp territory?"

"Looks like we walked into a trap," Edward said as Alphonse took over flight control. He took a deep breath, but the calming techniques never seemed to work as well for him as they did for Alphonse. He tried all the same. "Look – those are skipray blastboats. Smugglers!"

Alphonse nodded, flipped more switches and scowling. "I'm glad I got the deflectors working, but they're only at 20 … we can't afford to get hit. At_ all_."

"They've noticed us," Edward swore, already calculating a new route. "How are we going to get out of the gravitational influence of the Interdictor?"

"That's why Winry and I souped up the sublight engines before we took off … I had a _feeling_ something like this might happen." Alphonse frowned at one of the control panels, smacking it. "The quad lasers aren't coming online."

"The cruiser is hailing us," Edward frowned, turning on the reciever.

"…repeat, unidentified ship. Power down and prepare to be boarded. Unidentified ship…"

"Smug bastards," Edward said, turning off the radio transmitter. "Our IF/F is still deactivated, right?"

"Unless you fiddled with it on one of your rampages," Alphonse said, turning the ship sharply. "Here come the TIEs. I'm reading a full flight. How long until we're out of the range of those cruisers?"

"Too long." Edward took a deep breath, frowning at the skiprays. Something was tingling at the back of his mind. "Al, turn around."

"What?"

"You heard me, turn around!" Edward reached up and switched the charging quad lasers off.

Alphonse stared over at his brother in disbelief. "What are you _doing_!"

"Trust me," Ed snarled, bringing up the concussion missiles. He really had no idea what he was doing, this was possibly the stupidest idea he'd had yet, but something had guided him in this direction. "Turn around and head for those skiprays."

"I hope you know what you're doing," Alphonse said, jerking the ship up and into a tight loop. A flight of TIEs had been trying to catch up with the ship, and they scattered, lasers firing at the ship as it passed through the center of the formation. "We get hit, and we're spacedust."

There were only two of the blastboats, but they were flying escort for a ship not much larger than the brother's own. "We're up against an Interdictor there's two flights of TIEs deployed and probably at least two full squadrons on board. What are you planning on doing?"

"Get us between the big ship and the cruiser," Edward said, dual-locking the concussion missiles. Firing two at once would damage each tube, but it was reperable. "Can we get a shielded line?"

"Doubt it." Alphonse said. "Try the scrambler."

"Attention skiprays, this is the _Rethin Miner_. Are your torpedo tubes damaged?"

The reply that came back from the closest skipray was scattered with static. "Negative, _Rethin Miner_; our torpedo tubes are undamaged."

"Great." Edward slapped a few more buttons as Alphonse navigated their ship close to the other large ship. He typed out a few commands quickly. "I'm transmitting coordinates to your ship. On my mark; fire at them."

Alphonse couldn't take his concentration off of piloting, but he felt a surge of confidence roll off of his brother as the skiprays acknowledged the coordinates. "What are you…?"

"Missiles away," Edward muttered, depressing the firing button. The ship bucked as a double-load of missiles were released. "Mark, skiprays!"

Parallel sets of proton torpedoes arced away from the ships. Edward craned his neck to follow the trails. His concussion missiles had slammed into the strong deflector shields and detonated there, but the second set had caused the shields to flicker. "Come on, come on," he muttered. The first pair of proton torpedoes caused bluish lightning to arc along the impact point, and then…

"The Interdictor's shields are down!" Alphonse exclaimed, almost unwilling to believe the sensor scan. It would just take a pair of proton torpedoes to take out one of the gravity wells …

The skiprays pilots knew it just as well as they did. One of small ships darted forward, tail spinning rapidlys as its lasers lit to life. It only took seconds for the skiprays to take out not one, but two of the four gravity wells.

Edward leaned forward as a tight-beam wave broadcast transmitted coordinates to their navcomputer. "They want us to follow them."

"Could be a trap," Alphonse said. "But…"

"Doesn't feel like it, I know. Let's follow them… worst comes to worst, we can blast out easily enough." Edward was typing quickly into the navcomputer as the ship bucked again and the hyperdrive purred to life. "Gravity wells disengaged."

"We clear?" Alphonse's hand was already on the lever. The main ship was already gone, only the skiprays remained to keep the TIEs off of the brother's back.

"Best shot we're gonna get." Edward pulled off his headset. "Punch it."

Alphonse drew the lever towards him, and the stars elongated into the tunnel of light. They were free.


End file.
